DOES ABSTRACT ART HAVE TO BE “UNDERSTOOD”?

It would be scandalous to allow the continuation of ideas where abstraction is considered hogwash, a form of artistic expression reserved for intellectual elites, the only ones with appropriate cultural baggage capable of “understanding” something.
Every artistic approach is shared. Without interaction, an artwork has no existence, or at least, it becomes lifeless. But this interaction, only real way to “understand”, can’t exclusively be analytic. It first has to be instinctive and sensorial. However great our knowledge or our capacity to reason is, we will never be able to apprehend Art uniquely in a Cartesian manner: similarly, we can’t understand the soul by dissecting bodies.
Of course, a factual analysis shouldn’t be proscribed, and it isn’t any less interesting to learn about techniques, composition, or the context that saw the creation of artwork. It is by opening the mind, through contemplation and an emotional journey, that a real approach can be made.
Abstraction isn’t only the feat of the artist: in its turn, the public has to disregard their baggage, their preconceived ideas or even their direct surroundings, to become the blank canvas where will be applied emotions, tragic or joyous, gentle or violent, proposed by the artist, and attain a form of comprehension that is purely personal, unique, intimate and consequentially the just interpretation.

To discover the artists in this section, visit the virtual exhibition